


A Measure of Peace

by LogosMinusPity



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: AU, Dragons, F/F, injured Lightning, inspired a bit by The Hero and the Crown, some angst i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LogosMinusPity/pseuds/LogosMinusPity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victory comes, but at a price.  Lightning has done the what no other could dream, and saved the realm, but at what cost?  There is always a price to paid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely inspired by the worlds of "The Hero and The Crown", and "The Blue Sword" (mainly the former), both awesome fantasy books for young adults authored by Robin McKinley. I definitely recommend reading them if you have not.
> 
> I wrote this as a bit of a warm-up, so to speak, to get back into writing before I try to get back to my baby/beast: Nautilus City.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Lightning jerked awake from her dreams of fire and ash, and immediately there was a firm but gentle hand easing her shoulder down, while another pressed a cool towel to her forehead.

“Easy.  It was just a dream.”

It took far too long for her swimming vision to clear and focus on the woman who she knew owned that voice.

Even through her still-blurry vision, she could see the lines of worry and exhaustion on Fang’s face.  They were lines that had been present for over two months now, a reminder of just how long Lightning had been confined to bedrest, and how she had yet to heal.

The most obvious of her injuries had easily mended.  The massive burn across her back had been sealed back together by the potions and herbs that the healers treated her with, and her hair, if still rough and sparse, was well on the way to growing back.  Yet her convalescence had stopped there, and it was her other symptoms that kept her sedentary on even the best of days, and prone on all of the others.

Her body was weakened beyond any measure from her memory, plagued by the fever that came and went, and with it the bouts of delirium.  Her tongue tasted only ash when she could stomach food; her lungs burned even with the hearth-warmed air; and ever present was the cough.  When it struck her, there was no stopping it.  Her entire body would hack and heave until blood splattered her pillow and her hand, and no amount of healer’s remedies and concoctions could ease it.

She was not healing from her battle, and though Fang was by her side every waking moment, encouraging her progress, Lightning knew it.  She knew it with a surprising clarity given the moment.  Usually her dreams were symptoms of her fever-induced hallucinations, recollections of red eyes and smothering smoke and blinding fire, with fear ever pounding in her veins.  But this one had been different, and the voice of the faceless woman echoed even now in her head, urging her to get up and leave while she still had the strength to.

Night had fallen outside her window, and the twinkle of stars accompanied the nearly full moon.

Lightning felt the familiar and burning ache in her lungs, mirroring the fever that throbbed beneath her temples.

“We’re leaving.”

Fang dropped the towel from where she stood over the water bowl with a loud smack, clearly surprised by the proclamation. “We’re...what?”

Lightning repeated herself, throwing her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for the nearby robes.  She gritted her teeth with the effort of putting on the set of clothes, but when she glared at Fang, the warrior didn’t argue.  She instead poked her head out the door, giving orders for the horses to made ready.

With her dress robes properly on for the first time in weeks, Lightning sucked in a breath, planting her feet to the tiled floor as she prepared to stand.

When Fang reached down to help her up, the hand was pushed away sharply, the aid scorned before Fang could even do anything.  Lightning began to stand, leaning her weight heavily on the rough and knobbed cane by her bedside in order to hoist herself upright.

When Fang reached out a second time, Lightning stopped the motion with a harsh glare.

“...not for this.  I refuse help for this.” Her voice was a hiss of pain, but strengthened by the underlying will.  Her body might have decayed with forced disuse, but she refused to let her mind do the same.

With only the slightest of tremors, she stood up fully.  For one precarious moment, her body swayed and the room around her spun sickly.  But Fang did not reach out for her.

Lightning breathed in and out a few times, reorienting her body with the sensation of being upright.  Then she nodded toward Fang.  It was time to go.

Fang held open the door, held open the way out of the room, and Lightning began walking, leaning heavily on her cane for support, but determined to make her way without help.  Even from Fang’s.  She was Lightning Farron, and no sickness or injury would make her break and bow before it.  She had been carried into this castle, too weak to even mount her horse, but she would leave by her own two feet, and of her own volition.

Each step, however, was its own personal agony.  Muscles and scar tissue alike protested at the strain after countless weeks of bedrest, and her chest burned for the effort of simple breathing.  Yet she refused to back down from the pain.  Foot, cane, foot.  Foot, cane, foot..

She repeated the process over and over, limping regularly out of the nobles’ quarters that had been her sick bed for many long days and to the main hall that would lead her out of the royal castle and to the world outside.  The guards, expertly emotionless beneath their conical helmets, opened the door wordlessly, and Lightning entered the cacophony of sound and light that was the great hall.

The air gulped into her pained lungs, and then she began her walk.

Once she had been a star burning brightly amongst them all, a noble bloodline and immaculate knight.  She had been honored and respected, envied even by some.  And then she had changed that.

They didn’t understand her.  They didn’t understand why a rising young knight had thrown away the glory of the battlefield for the low work of hunting dragon-spawn.  They didn’t understand why a noble would step alongside a common warrior and clear vermin from settlements and forests. 

And what they didn’t understand, they disdained and shunned.

Lightning had not let herself care for the opinion of nobles, though her isolation had still hurt her more than she cared to admit—she, who had pledged her life to the protection of the kingdom and its people.

But then the great dragon had appeared.  Woken from a sleep of centuries, the last of the true dragons, Kalameet the Black.  None of the donkey-sized wyrms she normally hunted could have prepared her for the destruction that was Kalameet.  She had thought she could handle him without Fang—and what choice did she have?  How could she have refused the peasants who had come, terrified and pleading, just because Fang was away for a few days longer?  But when they had said his wings were so large as to blot out the sun, when they had said each eye was larger than a human head, when they had said only desolation was left in his path...they had not lied.

Her fire-proof balm, so effective against the small wyrms and even the blacksmith’s fire, had burnt away to nothing when struck by the just the outer corona of Kalameet’s white-hot flame.  She had consigned herself to the imminent death that awaited her and Odin, though she had refused to fall without a fight, perhaps to weaken the monster for another, one less foolish than her.  Yet somehow— _somehow_ —she had won.  Her blade had succeeded where her spear throw had failed, sinking deep into one crimson eye.  Kalameet had been slain by her hand, and when the King’s Guard and Fang had finally reached the site of the great battle three days later, it had been to a nearly dead Lightning, still somehow clinging to life. 

A “miracle”, the healers had said.  They had said that she should have died at the scene of her battle, that she should have succumbed to her injuries when they had carried her burnt and defeated body back to the keep.

And now instead she was hobbled.  A cripple struggling to simply bear her own body weight as she walked down the great hall, all eyes pinned pointedly upon her.  At least the king was not present currentlyl.  Conversation died before her and flared to life in her wake, and Lightning felt her eyes burn as sharply as her chest.

Not for the first time, she could only help but wonder if it might have been easier to have simply died like everyone expected her to have.

The gnarled head of the cane pressed roughly into her palm.  As she half walked and half dragged herself through the throng of nobles, she stared only forward, refusing to acknowledge anything but her final destination.  It was all that mattered now.

A manservant to the king darted forward, questions and protestations already forming on his lips, but Fang intercepted him before he could reach Lightning.

“...leaving.  That’s that.  We will send regards to his Majesty at a later time.”

“But you can’t just go without the King at least bidding—”

“At ease, Dolorom,” that was a new voice now, male and baritone. “Nobles are free to come and go from the royal keep as they please, right?  Peace.”

That was Snow, and Lightning fought the urge to turn around and stare.  He was a fellow knight, respected and high-ranking in the court, and now as Lightning continued to walk, the only one present in the hall to dare fall in step alongside Fang behind her, lending his silent support to the lamed outcast of the court and the nobility.

It was not until she was at the end of the hall, and the air was ablaze with furious whispers and gossip, that Lightning paused.  But it was not for the talk that she stopped.

Above the doors to the great hall a new ornament had been hung.  How they had managed to drag such a massive trophy all this way back was beyond Lightning, but when she looked up at the skinless and grinning skull of Kalameet, she nearly trembled all over.  A howling laughter suddenly echoed within her head, weighing oppressively on her entire body.  She wondered, briefly, just how it was that no one else was so bothered by the skull as her.

 _It should have ended!_ She yelled internally. _It should have ended when I slew you.  You are dead now, so why hasn’t the kingdom gotten better?  Why does this shadow still hang over us all?!_

The skull only grinned back in an evil rictus. _Perhaps because you were supposed to die too.  Proud Lightning, abandoning your way as a knight to hunt dragons alongside a common warrior,_ the skull crooned at her, though she knew no one else could hear the silent taunts. _They despise you as much as they fear you.  What normal human girl casts aside her heritage and name and single-handedly defeats me?  They do not thank you.  They wish you dead and gone, written into history along with me._

 _But I saved them!_ Lightning’s internal scream of protest went unheard.

Laughter greeted her back. _And see how they reward you for it?  Some hero you are to them.  You should have died with me, and you know it just as well as them._

There was movement from behind her, and before either of her companions could speak, Lightning opened her mouth.

“We’re leaving.”

She pushed off from her cane again, limping under the watch of Kalameet’s skull and silent peals of laughter, through the main doors that the guards opened for her passage, and to the courtyard where Odin waited for her, anxious and freshly saddled alongside the pack horses.

Lightning stepped firmly down the first few stone stairs, and then her strength, so stalwart in her long march out of the castle, finally failed her.

She felt herself fall, but she never hit the ground.

In an instant, Fang was on her, cradling Lightning in her strong and steady arms with an ease that indicated just how terribly thin Lightning had grown.  Lightning opened her mouth to argue, to protest, and then it struck her again.

The coughing.

It racked through her entire body, burning no differently than the day she had swallowed in the dripping of dragon fire, searing her throat and lungs, robbing her of voice and air. 

She coughed and coughed, and she could not stop for all that she tried, and her body shook as a frail reed in the wind.  Fang’s voice called out from above her, but when she opened her mouth to speak, only flecks of red blood shot out, no different than in the many long and delirious weeks past.  The scars of Kalameet were burning from within, and it was consuming her.

Lightning only vaguely heard the worried prancing and snuffing of Odin beside them, concerned for his young mistress, and for the frantic arguing which had broken out.

“...madness, Fang!  She can barely stand!” Snow’s voice drifted above her.

“She doesn’t want to stay here anymore.”

“She _needs_ to stay here for more healing before she can go—”

Fang’s voice cut him off, filled with helpless anger. “Then she’ll die here!”

There was silence but for the labored and wheezing breaths that Lightning knew came from her own mouth as her cough finally subsided.

“She’ll die,” restated Fang, and her voice wobbled precariously. “She isn’t getting better, Snow.  She hasn’t been since the day they recovered her and brought her here.  You know it, just as well as I.”

Her voice broke at the end.  Lightning struggled merely to breathe, unable to find any words to utter back.  What Fang had spoken was the truth, though it was something not even Lightning had yet found courage to face, for the thought of wasting away to merely die in bed frightened her more deeply than any end she might meet on a battlefield.

Finally, the knight nodded, though his face was too shadowed for Lightning to properly see what expression he wore. “So be it.  Then you mean to take her somewhere else for her final days?”

Fang rounded on him, her lips curled back in fury. “I mean to take her home!  To open fields and green pastures.  To a place where she at least has a chance of recovery instead of in those dark cells of rooms that they call noble’s quarters here.”

The large knight raised his hands placatingly. “I mean no offense by words, Yun Fang.” He shook his head as he walked over to the horses, ensuring that all of the straps and packs were tightly set for them. “There is no reason for Lightning to stay here, not given the outlook.  You would think...you would think the death of that monster would be cause to celebrate, but it feels as though an even heavier shadow hangs over us all.  The dragon may be dead, but perhaps he would have ended us with swifter mercy than the war that hangs on the horizon now.”

He shook his head again and held Odin steady as Fang mounted him, and Lightning was placed firmly into Fang’s waiting arms. “The end of us all may yet soon approach.  Best to be gone from this dark place in these darker times.  Ride swiftly, Fang.  I’ll handle telling his Majesty.  My thoughts will be with you both.”

Lightning felt Fang shift to better accommodate carrying her. “Thank you, Snow.  Take care.  Hiyah!”

And with the last command, Odin was off from the courtyard in a brisk gallop, the pack horses following obediently behind him.   

Lightning felt the bubblings of a cough in her chest as they rode away, and choked it back forcefully, swallowing down the wet copper in her throat and mouth.

The stars spun overhead, and she wondered, idly, whether or not she would ever again be able to taste the simple joys of food and flavor on her tongue again, whether her lungs would ever stop burning with each inhalation of breath, whether her hair would ever again return to its original shade of red, or if it had been permanently bleached pink by the white-hot dragon fire.

And she wondered, as Fang held her tightly and she felt a warm and salty liquid begin to drip down onto her from the face above, if she would ever again see Fang smile like she used to.

She missed Fang’s broad smile with an ache that struck deeper than any remnant wound.

But as they moved steadily away from the castle, and the pain in Lightning’s lung eased somewhat, she found herself remembering Fang’s laugh and smile both with a warm pleasure; and with Fang’s arms wrapped around her, for the first time since Kalameet, Lightning settled into a deep and restful sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now out of the royal city, Lightning may have a chance to actually recover from the devastating effects of her battle. But can everything resolve itself so quickly? Or is there more at work?

Odin thundered into the dirt clearing that served as the village square of Oerba, and Fang bellowed out a loud call for help as she reined him in to a full stop.  They had ridden for three long days eastward into the hills from the royal city, and without stop for most of this day, for when Fang had been unable to wake Lightning from the fevered sleep that gripped her in the morning, cold panic had spurned her on to Oerba at a breakneck pace.

Night had long since fallen, and though a great many of the houses were still lit, those that had been darkened quickly flared into life at Fang’s call.

“Vanille!” yelled Fang, already preparing to dismount from Odin, Lightning still gripped tightly in her arms.

And in an instant Vanille was there, surprising even Fang with how quickly she had appeared. “Where is Lightning?  We were waiting.”

Fang readjusted the soundless and human bundle within her arms, and then had the momentary clarity to realize what was being said. “How did you know we were coming…?”

But her words trailed off as the large man who had arrived in the square alongside Vanille stepped forward, and Vanille gestured for Fang to pass down the blanketed cocoon in her arms that was Lightning.

She was loathe to release Lightning from her hands, but did so at Vanille’s beckon, handing over her precious burden to the tall stranger and his waiting grasp.

He accepting Lightning with a surprising gentleness, holding her firmly while Fang dismounted.

The cloak that she had last wrapped around Lightning was peeled back by Vanille, revealing a nearly skeletal and ghostly white form, one Fang knew radiated with the heat of an unnatural fever.

A hush fell over the gathered crowd of villagers.

“Great gods,” whispered Vanille, her face going pale as snow. “There’s hardly anything left.  Another few days and...”

Then she shook her head sharply, pointing the man who carried Lightning back toward the round healers’ house and following a mere half-step after him. “Quickly.”

“Wait, Vanille!” Fang couldn’t keep the high pitch of fear from her voice as she darted after them, stumbling in her haste. “Vanille wh—”

She was quickly cut off as Lightning was carried away from her, and Vanille waved her away. “There’s no time left, Fang.  Not now.”

And then both Vanille and the odd man disappeared into the house, the door shut firmly behind them.

Fang knew that she would be of no help to the healers now, only another body to get in the way of their work.  Odin and the other horses were already being led away by a stable hand, and the villagers that she had awakened in the clamor of her arrival were drifting back into their houses.  Fang stood helplessly by herself, continuing to stare after the small building that Lightning had been carried into.

It was just like Kalameet all over again. 

Lightning was left on the very brink of death itself, while Fang could nothing but stand behind, unable to even be there if the moment of her end did arrive.  Just as when they had first recovered Lightning, only just alive from the wounds the Black Dragon had given to her.

Fang had caught words of the awakening of the great dragon, Kalameet the Black, while on her way back from a call to clear a miners’ cave of nesting dragon spawn.  It was no hard job even by herself, and Lightning had been called to stay behind in the royal city while the king and his delegation were out treating with the rebellion near the north.

But it was not until she was a bare two days travel left to return to the royal city that the words had first reached her, brought by the first wave of peasants and merchants escaping south as though a northern demon were on their tails.

Dread had filled her then, fear of what Lightning might have chosen to do in Fang’s absence, for the royal city was further north, and closer to where reports had said the Black Dragon had risen.  So Fang rode like a spirit of wind itself, nearly laming her horse to get back to the castle in haste, just as the king returned with his own delegation.

But of Kalameet, the king and his men had no more knowledge than Fang.  There was no more to be heard of the great clouds of smoke, or of new villages being consumed in fire and ash, yet none had dared approach the direction of the dragon except for a single knight upon a white horse days earlier—and of that knight, of _Lightning_ , there had been no word.

Alongside the King’s Guard and the king himself, they had ridden out to follow in Lightning’s tracks, and there was not one amongst them that could claim to hope for anything good of it.

Thus it was with a mix of both heart-rending relief and horror that they found Lightning still alive an entire three days after her battle, barely clinging to life by a stream in the burnt down forest.

Fang had watched, helpless then too, as Lightning was loaded into a wagon, her once gleaming knight’s armor melted and crushed, her voice and breath ripped from her lungs, her hair burnt from her scalp, and her skin scorched from her back.

Odin had served as Fang’s ride the entire long trek back to the royal city, for only the horse could come close to understanding the anguish in her heart.  Each hour was battle unto itself, for there was no knowing if Lightning would survive longer than what she had thus far.

Two months of “healing” had made no difference, and Fang felt the same darkness that had grown on her mind since the day she was first told of Kalameet nearly crush her with its untold weight.

Lightning was dying.  And there was not a thing that she could do about it.

So she leaned against the door of the healer’s house, buried her face into her hands, and wept unashamedly.

* * *

 

There was fire.

It surrounded her, ran in her veins, burning her from both within and without, boiling her blood and consuming her body.

Yet there was no release.  There was no end to spare her from the pain.  There was only agony, and the laughter of Kalameet echoed all around her, claiming that even in death he had won.

And then the fire receded.  The heat began to cool, and she felt a balm spread from within her chest, soothing the pain in her lungs, calming her blood.

Lightning’s eyes slowly fluttered open, and she blinked away the after image of dreams, of the same woman from before standing over her, long hair spilling past her shoulders, dark eyes tired but piercing.

Light was pouring in through the open window next to her bed, and her ears quickly picked up the sound of birds chirping.  She was not sure where she was, and she was alone, but for the figure of Fang sitting in a corner of the room, her head bowed over and her arms crossed as she awkwardly slept.

She swallowed once, darted her tongue out to wet her lips, and then dared to test her unused voice.

“Fang?”

Though it was hardly above a whisper, the warrior jerked to life as though a call to arms had been yelled.  She jumped up, opening the door from the small bedroom and calling out, “Van! She’s awake!”

Then in an instant she was by Lightning’s side, just as fast as in the past months when Lightning had been slowly dying in her quarters at the royal city.

A hand was pressed to her forehead, testing.

“No fever,” murmured Fang, clearly more to herself than to Lightning. “Good.”

Lightning cleared her throat as Fang’s hand retracted. “Where...where are we?  What’s happened since…?”

...since whenever she had last been cognizant.  And the delirious haze of dreams and memories gave her no indication of the passing of time.

“You’re in Oerba, Lightning.” Both Lightning and Fang turned toward the door, and toward the owner of the voice.  Even though she only met the petite woman once years earlier, she recognized Fang’s younger sister, Vanille, immediately. “Fang arrived here with you late into the night three days ago.  Myself and the other healers here began treating you as soon as we brought you inside.  And for the past few days you have been sleeping, and hopefully recovering.”

Vanille approached, and though she was small, she possessed a healer’s air of authority that Lightning did not recall from their first meeting.

“So, Lightning, how do you feel?”

It was a good question, and one that she had to think carefully about as she answered.

“I feel weak,” she responded truthfully. “Weak, tired, and drained.  But, I also feel...clear.  Awake.”

Vanille nodded slowly, the smile on her face indicating that she was pleased with the response. “Good.  Then you are healing.  Now just keep doing that.”  

Then she proffered the steaming bowl that she had carried with her into the room.

Lightning accepted, looking down at what had been offered.

It was a small bowl, with an even smaller amount of food, just simple root vegetables and no seasoning of any kind.  Now awake and hungry, Lightning’s gut gave an already unhappy growl at the small portion, but when she looked up, Vanille was unsympathetic to her plight.

“Not too much,” she explained patiently. “Your stomach needs to get used to food again.  You’ve barely been eating enough for a child, let alone a grown woman and knight.  And you’re only just beginning your true recovery.  No messing it up by trying to jump steps.”

And while she quickly ate every last vegetable in the meager portion given to her, she found to her surprise that she was full, even from such a startlingly small amount.

Vanille repeated herself again when Lightning was through. “Good.  Now just keep recovering.”

Though Lightning was busied as Vanille began to check her vitals, she didn’t miss the wet glimmer in Fang’s eyes as she took the bowl from the room, no more that she missed the broad, if trembling, smile that accompanied it.

It was the first time she had seen Fang smile in months, and more than her full belly or calm lungs, it gave her hope.

* * *

 

Rebuilding what basic strength she had lost during her illness was not so simple as starting to eat again, though.  Each day became a laborious process of working her atrophied muscles back to even a normal measure of usability, usually by simple walks.  To even just walk the length of the house was at first a painful and exhaustive excursion, but Vanille tasked her to keep pushing her limits, more content for Lightning to walk as far as she could and then take Odin back if needed.

However, the efforts were paying off. 

For today, they had walked all the way across the meadows northeast of Oerba, to the wide and glimmering lake that sat between the village and the first foothills of the mountains.  Lightning had been unable to make the trek without her cane, but the effort had been well worth it.  It seemed as though her final decision to leave the royal city had been the right one.  She didn’t know how, but whatever healing she had been given had worked, and with every passing day she felt her lungs further ease, and her strength start to regain itself.  In the fresh and open air of Fang’s home village, she could begin to recover herself.

But for the moment as she sat in the long grass by the shore next to Fang, she could also relax.

She was tired from their walk, and knew that she would need to take Odin on the way back to the village.  Yet there was no urgency to return.  Odin was still back in the hilly meadows behind her with Vanille, leaving Lightning to rest alongside Fang.

Her lungs still ached from the effort of their walk, but the unnatural cough no longer plagued her.  All of her injuries were healing, except for one—though it was hardly a true “injury”.

Lightning fingered one long curl of her new pink hair.  The color, as if literally bleached by the dragon fire that had scorched half of her scalp and burnt away her old hair, showed no sign of reverting to its original deep red.  It was a new look that she was learning to resign herself to, along with the uneven and unpredictable patterns with which it seemed to be growing 

“...it’s just so, so…” She could hardly even think of a proper term for it.

“Pink?” suggested Fang, a teasing grin playing on her face.

Lightning sighed. “Yes.  Not that there is much to be done about it.  I’m just not sure what to make of it.”

“I like your new hair,” said Fang, chuckling warmly, her grin morphing to more of a gentle smile.  She reached out then, fingers moving to touch some of the hair in question.  Lightning turned to look at Fang more directly, and as she did, she caught Fang’s eyes visibly dropping for a long second toward Lightning’s lips, and it made her heart pound suddenly and unexpectedly within her chest.

But then Fang’s hand froze halfway, trembling just the slightest bit, and when Lightning looked into her eyes, she saw the shadows of pain and fear alike, paralyzed with apprehension.

Lightning reached out to clasp Fang’s wrist, pulling the hesitant palm to rest against her cheek

“I’m not going to break, Fang.” It had been so long since she had last felt Fang’s touch upon her as more than just a caretaker, and she leaned into the hand. “I promise.”

She tilted her head in, until their noses almost touched, and it was only then that Fang finally moved.  Her hand slid comfortably from Lightning’s cheek to cup the back of her neck, fingers tangling in the unruly waves of champagne hair, and then she kissed Lightning.

It was their first kiss since before Kalameet, and Lightning wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip from her.  Both her hands rose up, gripping the material on the front of Fang’s tunic, desperate to keep her close.  There was no need for it, though.  Fang’s hand tightened against her neck, and she kissed Lightning again, and again, and again.

From where she stood on the hilltop, Vanille rolled her eyes at the antics and snorted, already turning back toward the settlement, leaving Odin to continue prancing in the dandelions until whenever his mistress was ready.  She had a feeling that Lightning and her sister would make it back just fine on their own, and that they would likely appreciate the privacy for the time being.

As she walked back, she was smiling broadly.

* * *

 

Fang rolled out of bed, mildly surprised to be up before Lightning, but also pleased to note that Light was sleeping in.

The woman needed it, for all that her recovery had been steadily progressing.  And considering that they had kept each other awake late into the night…

Fang coughed lightly. 

Well and well, it was just good to see Lightning sleeping in for once.

The woman in question was sleeping on her stomach, the blankets pushed back to only cover the lower half of her naked back as she breathed in a slow and quiet rhythm.

Fang smiled as she shrugged on a robe, her eyes focusing in on the bright splash of strawberry hair that spilled across the pillow.

The pink was quite the change from the flaming red hair Fang had grown to love in the years past, but it really did have its own distinctive charm, particularly with its asymmetric mess of spikes, curls, and waves.

Fang felt her lips tug upward, but the smile quickly faded as her gaze took in the starburst of scar tissue across Lightning’s pale and exposed expanse of back.

The scar was massive, even with all of the healing that had gone into it, stretching from below the left hip bone and all the way up through the ribs and shoulder blade toward the spine.  Truly, it should have killed her, and the thought made Fang shiver, even with her robes now on.

_But she’s back now.  She back and healing more with every day.  It’s over._

So why didn’t it feel like it?

She shook the thought from her head, tried to remove the remnant of anxiety that stubbornly remained in her gut.

It wasn’t helped when she walked into the kitchen.

Usually ever cheerful, Vanille’s face was grave, and her brow was furrowed with worry.

Fang stopped for a moment, completely taken aback. “Van...what...?”

Her sister shook her head morosely, speaking only one word. “War.”

Fang took a heavy seat, mulling carefully before speaking, Snow’s last words hanging in her ears. “With the north, then.”

She received a nod in response. “The village just received word this morning.  Armies are pouring from the north to attack the capital.  And most of the soldiers are not very...human.”

Unsurprising, given their forefathers stories of the cursed lands to the north of their kingdom.  So Snow had been correct, then.  It was only a matter of time.

But, it hardly changed Fang’s outlook from then.

“So?” she asked, her voice deliberately callous and hard.

Vanille’s eyes darted away for a moment. “There’s been a call to arms issued, to every last corner of the kingdom.  They need every last able-bodied fighter—”

 “I don’t give a bloody damn!” Fang managed to keep her voice relatively low, but her fist still lashed out on instinct, slamming the thick wood of the table with jarring rattle.  She ground her teeth, trying to control her emotions.  It was useless to vent them on Vanille of all people. “I came back here for Lightning.  I’m not leaving because the very people who ostracized her are calling for help.  And besides, one more body will hardly make the difference.”

Vanille looked only further troubled, and seemingly conducting an internal debate, she spoke again. “It’s not just that, Fang.  There’s a message.”

Vanille turned around and pulled open a drawer, removing a roll of wax-sealed parchment.  Just the sight of it made Fang’s blood run cold.

“What—”

“What message?”

Everyone stopped, turning around as Lightning entered the room.  Despite her bedrobe, cane, and persistent limp, her eyes were proud, and she looked as impressive as if she were in full armor and regalia.

She made her way over until she was just a few scant feet from Fang, where she repeated herself. “What message?  From whom?”

Vanille shook her head, but held out the sealed parchment.

“Lightning...neither I nor the other healers here in Oerba were responsible for saving your life.  When Fang brought you here...there was so little left of you.  Too little.  You were beyond our skill to save.”

Lightning straightened, her eyes flashing and intent. “Then how…?”

“The mystic woman from the mountains.  She and her manservant walked out of the mountain foothills just a scant few days before you arrived.  She told us that you would be coming...and that you were dying.  She came to save you.”

“But...how…?”

Vanille shook her head, clearly distressed now. “I don’t know.  Clairvoyance?  She knew that you were coming, and that you needed healing.  I don’t know what potions she used or where they come from, but I’m telling you the truth.  She saved your life.”

“And so then she just left after all of that?” exclaimed Fang, unable to keep the scorn from her voice.

“I don’t claim to understand what happened, Fang!” said Vanille, her own voice sharpening. “She left after the first night.  All she said was that she needed to return to her home...and that I was to give you both this when the time was right.  That I would know.  And I think that time is now.”

Before Fang could do or say anything, Lightning accepted the parchment, breaking the seal on it with a practiced ease.  Her eyes scanned it once, and then she handed it to Fang before taking a seat in front of the hearth.

As Fang took her own time reading the cryptic message, Lightning spoke, perhaps in part for Vanille, and in part for them all to hear it aloud. “It’s a summonings.  This mystic requests that Fang and I both seek her out...in the mountains that rises beyond the lake.”

“But,” began Vanille. “Why—”

“‘A shadow far greater and deceiving than either army nor dragon falls upon the land, and it stretches from the North,’” read Fang. “‘In your hands, I believe, lays the ability to win this silent fight.  Find me when you have read this, and I will help you as I can.’”

What...what was Fang even supposed to say to this?

She sat down beside Lightning, tossing the parchment into the coals and wood, where it quickly began to burn.

Lightning was staring deeply into the flames of the cooking hearth, and what thoughts were veiled behind her eyes were a mystery to Fang.

“Lightning…”

They shared a glance, and Fang braced herself, certain that she was not going to like what she was about to hear.

“Fang...if what has been said is true...if this woman saved my life like Vanille said, then the very least I owe her is an answer to her message.  It is only just.  And if this shadow really is consuming the kingdom, if the Black Dragon was but the start...”

Her voice died away as she looked back into the fire.  The lines at the corners of her eyes tightened, and Fang knew not what silent memories plagued her now.  The warrior shivered, tearing her eyes from Lightning and glancing instead outside.

Oerba was remote, located in the farthest edges of the grassy hills before the Eastern Mountain Ranges foothills.  It was quiet, isolated, and peaceful, particularly compared to the turmoil that was now engulfing the kingdom.

_The darkness from the north…_

Though so quiet for the past generations, it seemed as though events had finally been set in motion, ones that perhaps Kalameet’s emergence was only one symptom of.

_But if Kalameet was only the beginning, if there is more yet to come…_

Then Fang knew that their peace would only be temporary, even so far removed as Oerba.  If the capital of Spira fell, then it would not be long before the demon armies turned their eyes elsewhere.

She couldn’t bear the thought of exposing Lightning to danger again, not when she had been on death’s doorstep a mere few weeks earlier.  But if things really were that dire, if such events had truly been set in motion…

Lightning’s eyes caught hers, and she saw beneath the clear and shining blue a heavy weight—one that had been present and growing since before even Kalameet emerged, and one that they all had felt, no matter how much they tried to ignore it.

Fang closed her eyes tightly for a long moment, collecting herself before finally reopening them, pushing up from her chair.  She gave her most winning smile to a startled Lightning, hoping that she wouldn’t see through how forced it was.

“Guess we need to go see this mystic of yours, Lightning.  See what she has to say that no one else has told us yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this has now become a multi-chaptered fic, officially. Not much else to say here, except thank you for reading.
> 
> All and any comments, criticisms, and feedback are always highly appreciated. Thanks!


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